SSL? SSLstrip? Hidden Networks for Wi-Fi Client Mode? SO MANY QUESTIONS

[TheFuzzyFish]

Hello! I'm relatively new to the forums, especially considering I just recently got my first Hak5 item 6 days ago for Christmas: the Hak5 Elite Field Kit.

Quite a handful at first, but slowly I started to learn how everything works (thanks pocket guide!), and I have just a few questions about my favorite item in the bunch, the Wi-Fi Pineapple Tetra.

1. Where is SSL in the main interface? I'm a high school student, so it's not like I can walk around with a laptop to do penetration testing, therefor I can't use a direct connection via ethernet or serial, nor do I have an android, so I have no micro USB interface. I do, however, have an iPhone, and thus I control the Pineapple Tetra via the management access point. So obviously, my connection to the web server is encrypted via WPA2, however being an aspiring penetration tester, I know that all it takes is someone listening to the handshake (or forcing my re-authentication) and that data, and after some time, the password to both my management AP and root account on the Pineapple is compromised. That's no good! Obviously, I've found ways around this (ssh -fNL 80:localhost:1471 root@172.16.42.1 on the computer, or I use ServerAuditor [now called Termius] to use local port forwarding on my phone), opening an SSH tunnel to route my HTTP traffic, which is close enough to SSL, but it's a pain. I also come from using strictly Apache2, and I'm unsure as to how I should configure Nginx to support SSL. Maybe in a future firmware update, there could be a setup for that?
2. While we're on the topic of SSL, how come SSL is available for the Wi-Fi Pineapple Nano but not the Tetra?? I was very excited to get into some simpler MITM attacks, but was rather disappointed when I only found SSLsplit, which I'm not at all knowledgeable about. All I can tell from it is that it's very unreliable, sometimes working, and sometimes just flat out not. I could definitely be wrong on this next part, but seeing as how the Tetra and Nano share the same firmware (I think??), I don't quite see the point of offering completely different modules when it has nothing to do with the hardware.
3. In my testing lab setup, I have a hidden network that I do some toying with, and was rather befuddled when I wandered into Wi-Fi Client mode to find that there was no option to connect to a hidden network! It wasn't even mentioned in the Help module. Possible future firmware addition?
4. I know that there are multiple ways to broadcast wireless networks (Occupineapple, PineAP, and Networking), but I have yet to find any option in the UI or in the actual machine (via SSH) to host a fully-manageable network, where I control the specifics, such as encryption type (WPA2 is forced in the Management AP, whereas I like to toy with Radius, or even WEP),  bandwidth throttling (can't have people stealing all the 3G on a field deployment!), bridging techniques (in Wi-Fi Client Mode, NAT is forced), etc...

So yeah, maybe if some administrators happen across this article, they can make some notes for future firmware releases, or if a user comes along, they can enlighten me in some methods of achieving some things listed here.

Thank you! Keep up the excellent work!